Hot take: The Leaf could have beat Pain without Naruto
If tsunade focused on fighting instead of healing, Pain would have stood no chance. Konohamaru took out a path by himself, Kakashi almost handled 2/3 of the strongest paths; Tsunade is a horrible matchup for pain, no ninjitsu to absorb, and she one shots any path and most of the summons. With the pains split up throughout the village, if the hokage was working through the village she can pretty much handle any path one on one and the assault would be over pretty quickly, especially with kakashi and konohamaru handling 3/6. Not to mention Danzo is apparently mid-high Kage level cracked with a powerful summon and decides not to help at all, he could probably handle konan at least. Obviously more people would have died, and tsunade and Danzo each had their motives for healing/staying out, but pain really stood no chance against the combined might of the leaf village
Thoughts ?
Posted Jan 14, 2026, 3:11 AM UTC